This invention relates generally to machines for crimping electrical terminals to conductors of a wire, and, more particularly, to crimp height adjustment mechanisms for a terminal crimping machine.
Terminal crimping machines have long been used in the connector industry to effect high-speed mass termination of various cables. It is common practice for the crimping machine to have an interchangeable tooling assembly called an applicator, and a powered mechanism called a terminator. In general, such terminators include a terminator ram which is driven by an electric motor or other power source. The applicator may include upper and lower forming tooling and feed tracks for guiding a continuous supply of terminals. The terminator ram is coupled to an applicator ram which holds a crimping tool-head. The attached tool-head is driven by the rams into proximity with a continuous strip of terminal(s) to be crimped. Many conventional terminators are of a push link or roller design wherein a crank pin is coupled to the terminator ram. The crank pin compels the ram downwardly during a 180 degree portion of its orbit to advance the rams and crimping tool-head toward an anvil of the applicator. The terminal(s) are formed by the anvil and the tool-head.
However, these known crimping terminators do not allow convenient adjustment of the crimp height to compensate for such things as tooling wear, dimensional tolerances of replacement parts, and dimensional changes due to temperature variations. Typically, a manual crimp height adjustment mechanism is provided, such as, for example, a dial wheel, which adjusts a position of the crimp tooling or the crank pin. Other crimp height adjustment mechanisms have adjusted a height of the anvil. However, if the terminator is mounted on automatic wire processing equipment, moving the anvil may affect other settings of the equipment, such as the wire presentation height to the continuous-feed applicator.